Insurgents using pre-paid mobiles to detonate explosive devices
by Daniel Pedersen on Mar.26, 2009, under Battles, Southern Thailand, Thailand reportage
The Courier Mail
April 20, 2005
Bangkok
THAILAND’S top security officials have asked mobile telephone service providers to demand identification from pre-paid card users in a bid to stop remote detonation of bombs.
Insurgents in the country’s three southernmost provinces have been using pre-paid mobile telephones, cards for which are available for as little as 50 baht (64 cents), to detonate explosive devices.
Should the new regulations be introduced, which seems almost certain, Thai citizens will have to provide their 13-digit national identification numbers before buying a card.
Foreigners will have to give their passport number.
There are about 22 million pre-paid cards in circulation at any one time in this country of 62 million people.
Mobile telephone companies have said they are willing to implement the measures.
But they say that cancelling services to those individuals who refuse to show ID for cards already in use may prove a legal stumbling block.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said a balance would have to be found between convenience and national security.
The defence heavyweights proposing the measures are looking to close a loophole in security laws that has allowed Muslim insurgents in the deep south to direct a campaign of terror.
Similar to tactics employed in Iraq, the separatists have been setting off a bomb, luring police and military bomb squads to the scene, only to remotely detonate more explosive devices, often causing fatalities and devastating injuries.
But the targets for such bombings have now broadened, and defence officials have undoubtedly been spurred into action by the triple bombing on Sunday, April 3, that killed two people and wounded scores.
The lounge area of Hat Yai International Airport, the main air terminal of the restive south, was targeted with a bomb detonated by mobile telephone.
The airport, a department store and a hotel were targeted.
Critically injured at the airport was four-year-old boy Patcharapol Charoensil, or Hong Te, and his plight captured the hearts of a nation.
Yesterday Hong Te had regained consciousness and taken a few shaky steps before preparing to leave Hat Yai Hospital’s intensive care unit.
"He is out of danger," said Deputy Public Health Minister Anuthin Charnveerakul.
"His doctors plan to keep him under close medical observation for another week, after which he will be released from ICU."
One of the first questions Hong Te asked his mother was the whereabouts of his dad.
His father, Nattapol Charoensil, 39, was killed trying to shield his son from the blast.
ENDS
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